Sunday, June 27, 2010

Froot Loop-de-loops


Kathy here. In my online research I spend a lot of time looking for variations of “contra costa county wines” and “Oakley grapes.” I managed to find a message board that was cataloging old vineyards. In the course of the discussion someone mentioned how Toucan Wines’ newsletter announced their latest Evangelho Vineyard release. What? Another wine to search out and find. Of course, I immediately looked up their Web site and saw that all of the Evangelho Carignane was sold out. Oh well, I’d sign up for their newsletter.

Approximately a month later an announcement came through the e-mail — the Carignane had been released. I immediately got on the phone to owner Doug Timewell.

Doug met Frank Evangelho down near his ‘hood of Arroya Grande. Frank was helping a neighbor plan out a vineyard and got to know Doug’s wines. Later when a contract for the Carignane fell through, Frank offered the grapes to Doug.

Doug originally made Carignane from Frank’s grapes in 2006. Those bottles sold out immediately. He and co-owner Terrie Leivers have just 200 cases of the 2008 (Frank didn’t have enough grapes in 2009 as it was a tough year).

I asked Doug about the eminent domain seizure of Frank’s property. He said that Frank was able to harvest his grapes in the year in question (hooray), but the whole thing was so hard on Frank that no one asks him about it. Frank, here’s to you. Your grapes make some tasty juice.

Doug’s Carignane has an amazingly high alcohol content of 15.9%, but you would never know it. It has a nose of blueberry pie with a bit of clove and cinnamon. There is a nice acidity to balance out the fruit and the wine has beautiful long finish. Tony picked up a bit of pumpkin pie spice (nutmeg, clove and cinnamon) and got a bit of pie crust in the mouthfeel. My biggest note was mmmmmmm.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Nightmare Town (1948)


Well, like any Sam Spade-styled Pinkerton agent on the case, I guess it’s time to report our progress on the case to sleuth out owners of, and winemakers using fruit from, the century-old, gnarly vines cropping up everywhere in our little city of Oakley, California.

Truth be told, the only thing hard-boiled about my detective work is the egg on my face. Oh sure, we’ve had a few small breaks with some Cline properties (e.g., Big Break vineyard, ironically enough), and we’ve been able to pinpoint a few local properties which appear on some wineries’ labels as vineyard designates.

They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and it’s true: Ignorance does indeed have a certain blissful quality to it. Kath and I started by noticing ancient wine vines everywhere we turned; an Internet search for Contra Costa County narrows down a list of local vineyards by name: Some appear on wine labels, some don’t. The puzzle is to locate the vineyards that do; and for the ones that don’t, figure out not only their location, but which wineries buy their grapes.

Either way, the aim is to find the wines, and drink our way through our local acreage.

Then there are the complications. In one instance, we have a list of local vineyards that we’ve never heard of (Ghidossi? Madruga?); in another, we have a tip about what an intriguing location is planted to, but no owner/vineyard name (a plot of old vines directly beside the Oakley post office is, according to Erin Cline of Three Wine Company, planted to Alicante Bouschet, a juicy, old-skool blending fave). Who grows it? Who buys it? Where can we purchase wine made from it?

These two instances were the exact circumstances precipitating our “Mission to Massoni” caper. Kathy had downloaded some tasting notes for Cline Cellars’ 2008 “Cashmere,” a Rhone-style blend of Mourvèdre, Grenache and Syrah. According to Cline’s notes, the Grenache is sourced from both Big Break and Massoni vineyards, both in Oakley. We had no idea where Massoni was located, so we motored up to Cline’s Sonoma tasting room to solve the mystery.

No one on staff could tell us where the Massoni property was.

Ah well, the 2008 Cashmere offered up a look of bright cherry and a great nose of inviting, typically Grenache bright fruit with a whiff of smoke. The zippy acid paired with black fruit on the front nine mingled with just a touch of earthiness. Long on the backstretch, too.

Cashmere was a cozy diversion, but Massoni was still MIA. Our Riedel empty, we were back on the case.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Cline v. Chateau Ste. Michelle: The Great Mourvèdre Smackdown


As noted earlier, Kathy and I transplanted ourselves from Seattle to the tiny East Bay city of Oakley. One of the largest wine playahs in the nation is Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, parent co. of the Chateau Ste. Michelle brand, and its palatial winery/tasting room/event facility/offices in Woodinville, just north of Seattle, Washington.

CSM’s wine club is a true class act, with a free annual wine-soaked outdoor concert for club members, and frequent limited-bottling club selections featuring small lots of varietals sourced from their contacts and vineyard holdings all over the state.

They’re a big, big corporate outfit, but their wines and customer service render them downright boutique.

For the last few vintages, they’ve bottled a Limited Release Columbia Valley Mourvèdre, which we’ve enjoyed, if only for the novelty and winemaking commitment to a varietal unusual for the Pacific Northwest. Unlike those in our Cali ‘hood, “old vines” in Washington state are in their early 30s, and the explosion in Rhone varietals specifically is younger still. It wasn’t that long ago in WA, that when a winemaker decided to bottle a varietal Cabernet Franc, it was downright exotic! So when CSM decides to put their winemaking muscle behind a Mourvèdre, hey, we’re there!

The 2006 Chateau Ste. Michelle bottling was a nice effort, exhibiting a few “look at me” qualities of earth, smoke and tannins.

And then Kath and I got it into our heads to compare this Pacific Northwest newbie with Cline’s 2008 Ancient Vines Mourvèdre made with grapes from their vineyard holdings in our neck of the woods. I wasn’t expecting something from century-old vines to be this smooth, though a couple of Pinot Noir-like notes (tar, rubber) punched through. It’s nice and bright on the palate, with sour cherry and blueberry juice components relaxing into a mocha vibe. The Cline was elegant and totally integrated.

It made the CSM taste simple and rustic, a complete role reversal for the city slicker and the grizzled farm hand.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

The Big Knockover (short story; story collection edited by Lillian Hellman 1966)


Take a gander at Kathy’s photo of Ledson, a hunka hunka pile o’ tourist trap located in the Sonoma Valley on Highway 12 up to Santa Rosa.

Speaking of Santa Rosa, Kath and I attended a free screening of Hitchcock’s “The Birds” last night, projected on a screen set up on the greensward at Oakley City Hall, as part of our burg’s summer program. Just as creepy as I remembered it growing up as a kid in Ottawa (Canada’s capital, bien oui — which is French for “eh”), but taking on new significance since we now live in Northern California. The avian attacks begin in Bodega Bay and by film’s end have “migrated” south to Santa Rosa, our longtime entrée to Dry Creek and Russian River Valleys in Sonoma wine country. Apparently the film’s ambiguous ending could have been freakier: Hitch reportedly had a final frame depicting the Golden Gate Bridge covered in crows/gulls/ravens, but it was scrapped due to budgetary constraints.

Coming full circle, North Bay to The City: When Kathy and I lived in San Francisco in 1998, we did rent a car to escape to Sonoma. At that time, Ledson castle was just under construction; tasting was in a double-wide adjacent to what looked like cross between the bombing of Dresden, and Camelot.

But here’s the punch: Rumor had it that part of the financing came from a partner who tried to use drug dough, and that the DEA had stalled construction. OK, this was 1998, and I don’t really know the do, but we WERE tasting premium wine in a trailer. I remember the story being better than the wine, but 10 years later, I’m very confused.

“The Castle” is one of those destination spots, just the way it was planned, lo a decade ago. Limousines full of bachelorette parties drinking Cosmos enroute, stretch Hummers disgorging frats and sororities: all parties perfectly content to stumble past the signs admonishing them that only food and drink purchased on the property will be allowed. No prob; $15 for a tasting, providing that the pourer deigns to lock retina with ya.

The real deal is that Kath and I found out that Ledson, with no distribution (everything is sold onsite), had made some juice from our Oakley ‘hood. We wanted to confirm that the bottles in the wine shop labeled “Contra Costa County” were, as researched, from Oakley vineyards.

In Ledson’s galleria, selling cheese, olives, pickled vegetables, merch and, oh yeah, some wine, Kathy and I found some Oakley stuff not available anymore. Dude, we found a 2002 Petite Sirah labeled the specific-but-not “Contra Costa County,” our first clue that the wine might come from vines in our ‘hood.

We wanted to confirm the provenance of these Petite grapes, and were told to confirm with tasting room dude “Leon” (not his real name; that was “David”) where the grapes came from. We were told, CIA-I-could-tell-you-but-I’d-have-to kill-you-style” that he could not tell us the origin of the grapes. We said that we were from Oakley, and he admitted, reluctantly, that they were, indeed, from an Oakley vineyard.

“Leon” could not divulge whence the grapes came. Our whole deal is that these vineyards are already anonymous; Ledson, hook a bruvah up.

We kid, because we love.

The 2002 Ledson Contra Costa County Petite Sirah is crazy. It’s got an opaque ruby garnet look, with a nose of cane fruit and Mexican molé spice and blueberry. This stuff continues on the tongue, with a touch of cardamom, integrated into an elegance I’d have never thought possible. Petite never seems to get the love.